Bush to focus on short-term tactics

President to present Iraq report this week

ANNE GEARANAssociated Press Writer

Published Sunday, September 09, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When President Bush gives Congress and the nation his status report on Iraq this week, he is likely to cast the unpopular war in grand terms, as a long-haul, strategic investment in a better Middle East.

His evidence that Iraq is worth the gamble and sacrifice, however, relies largely on the fruits of a new U.S. willingness to indulge Iraq's local, parochial politics for what may be short-term gain.

The startling alliance of U.S. forces and Sunni tribes that allowed Bush to make a surprise visit to Anbar province last week is expedient. It has reduced violence and allowed a window for economic development. But it could backfire on U.S. forces or unintentionally hasten a civil war.

This month's string of status reports on the war, now in its fifth year, gives disappointing grades to Iraq's central government, Army and police, the focus of Bush's current escalation of troops and the institutions the U.S. had considered the most critical to success.

The escalation was supposed to give the dysfunctional central government the breathing room to make hard bargains across sectarian lines. With little to show for that gambit, the administration is shifting the political rationale that Bush used to sell that policy in January and now focusing on strengthening local governments, militias and fiefdoms.

That means appealing primarily to local self-interest and only secondarily to the formerly prominent U.S. goal of unified national identity.

It also means whatever Bush says this week about Iraq, he is likely to stress grass-roots success stories that bypass the sectarian infighting in Baghdad and the spotty performance of Iraq's armed forces.

Anbar has transformed from an insurgent haven partly run by al-Qaida to a chunk of Iraqi heartland safe enough for the president and his war Cabinet to spend the day. The turnaround has much to do with calculated choices by Sunni chiefs fed up with al-Qaida excesses and has little to do with affection for U.S. forces that residents still call occupiers.

U.S. officials acknowledge the risks of the new tactics if Sunnis turn on the United States in Anbar or use the help they are getting from the U.S. to better position themselves for an eventual formal civil war with the majority Shiites.

Afghanistan is an example of how such tactics can backfire. The U.S. armed rebels in a Cold War proxy battle with the Soviet Union in the 1980s only to see the opposition groups fight one another in a subsequent civil war.

Despite the risks, outside analysts generally do not criticize the administration for trying to exploit an unexpected opportunity in Anbar.

"At this stage there are no good options, there are no low-risk strategies that promise to yield benefits," said Rand Corp. analyst and former diplomat James Dobbins. His article "Who Lost Iraq" appears in the current edition of Foreign Affairs magazine.

"All the potential strategies are high-risk because we have used up all our easier alternatives," he said.

The administration has not abandoned the goal of a power-sharing central government made up of a mix of Iraq's religious and ethnic groups -- Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and others -- and resists any suggestion that the new tactics are a capitulation to a hardening sectarian realignment in Iraq.

U.S. officials describe the thinking like this: Take advantage of this moment, even if it is fleeting, to strengthen local ability to do what national control has failed to do. At the same time, officials say, they are trying to extend the gains and give local leaders an investment in a national political compact.

The administration has lavished millions on the Anbar sheiks to fight al-Qaida, rebuild infrastructure and reopen schools and government offices, and is considering spending more. Direct local U.S. engagement is yielding smaller gains in other Sunni areas, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker is examining how the same tactics might be extended to majority-Shiite areas.

The U.S. has pressed the Iraqis to hold new provincial elections to give legitimacy to local governments. Provincial councils were selected in the January 2005 election, boycotted by most Sunnis as well as some Shiite groups.

As a result, many local administrations have not been fully accepted by a majority of their constituents.

"Provincial elections allow them to have a real say in the management of areas. It's a devolution of control to a more local level," one senior administration official said. "You get that much more credibility to serve people in their own local communities, it's less reliant on and provides something of a political counterweight to, the national government."

The official said strong local administration was always a U.S. goal for Iraq, and is part of the constitution drafted with U.S. help two years ago.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Crocker and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus, have not yet reported their findings.

A law administering provincial elections is among the list of 18 benchmarks that underlie this week's congressional testimony by Crocker and Petraeus and Bush's report to Congress.